Reference is made to: U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,864 to Yoshitake, U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,163 to Hatcher, U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,051 to Hoff, U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,076 to Thorp, U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,189 to Thorp, U.S. Pat. No. 5,274,613 to Seager, U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,934 to Wilson, U.S. Pat. No. 6,155,841 to Spanyar, U.S. Pat. No. 6,271,835 to Hoeksma, U.S. Pat. No. 6,454,369 to Cooper et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,467,860 to Remmers and U.S. Pat. No. 6,487,421 to Hess et al.
Advances in miniaturization technology may permit wristwatch-sized cellphones. These miniature cellphones may be detachably worn on the wrist, serving as timepieces between cellphone calls, or alternately carried in the pocket as separate instruments. They may even be worn on the surface of clothing, pendant style. As a generic label for these ultra small “postage stamp size” communication devices, they will be termed “micro cellphones” in the following text.
When the entire micro cellphone is the size of a wrist watch, or slightly smaller (postage stamp size), the design of the data input keyboard is challenging. A very small keyboard may be operated by the tip of a stylus, but this is not a convenient operation for the user. In this regard, reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 6,487,421 to Hess et al., in which a specialized stylus is believed to be described for data input.
Data processing and network link requirements make voice recognition operation in such miniature cellphones largely impractical for the near term, so that some type of “keyboard” data input is required.
Fingertip key button operation is considered the most convenient data entry system. Thus, for user ergonomics and ease of use, providing keycaps of a size that is more visible and that makes fingertip depression of the desired keycap easy is a perceived benefit. It may also be beneficial to space the keycaps sufficiently so that accidental operation of an adjacent keybutton is infrequent.
A response to the need for a keyboard for use with a very small cellphone is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,155,841 to Spanyar in which a film-layer based keyboard is described for sewn attachment to a nearby jacket sleeve.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,271,835 to Hoeksma is believed to describe a touch screen in which the displayed keybutton label and size is controlled by internal device electronics. Thus, the user may be provided with an optimized touch display customized on the forecast of “next keystroke needed.”
There is believed to be a need to provide physical separation of cellphone microphone and earphone locations which approximates the several inch separation between mouth and ear of the user. Certain patents are believed to have proposed solutions which unfold a wrist band to provide a separation between earpiece and microphone. Among these patents are believed to be U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,964 to Yoshitake, U.S. Pat. No. 5,274,613 to Seager and U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,189 to Thorp. Alternately, a RF wireless link to a separate headphone unit may be provided, such as is believed to be described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,045,051 to Hoff.
For general purpose use of the cellphone, continually wearing a separate, linked headphone may not always be convenient. It may also be inconvenient if the user must wait to answer or initiate a cellphone call until the separate headphone unit is withdrawn from a storage location, power turned on, and then placed on the side of the head. As described below, deployment of the keyboard in an example embodiment of the present invention from storage compaction may provide the desired separation of microphone and earphone locations.
There exists at least two types, or instances, of constraints on keycap size when designing a micro cellphone keyboard. In the first instance, if the keycaps remain the same size between storage and use, then it may be favorable to make the size of the keycap as large as possible within the storage space available and then to create space between these fixed size keycaps as the device transitions between storage and use conditions. This may allow the user to easily differentiate between keycaps and may reduce mistaken keybutton depressions, since a fingertip may be about the same size as the top surface of the keycap. It may also permit a larger keycap “real estate” on which to put legends.
Letters that may be translated into dialing numbers are used when it is desirable for a person to quickly remember a number from a letter and number sequence than with a number sequence alone.
Thus, one may see plumbing trucks with signs that read, for example, “Call 1-800-TRYHARRY” since the owner feels that this may be a more memorable sequence when you want a plumber than “Call 1-800-879-4277” would be. A consequence of this is that one may need to be able to easily read the alphabetic legends near each number key on the micro cellphone in order to dial the number correctly.
Thus, keycaps may need to bear dual legends, such as a number plus groups of letters (1 and “ABC”; 2 and “DEF”; 3 and “GHI”; etc.). It may thus be favorable to make the letter groups written on the keycap tops, along with the numbers, as large as possible so that the user does not need a magnifying glass to visually select the desired character or number on a keycap.
It is also possible to “semi-stack” the keycap top plates during storage, much in the manner of roof tiles. The amount of tiled stacking available may be limited by the keybutton's switch actuator size compared to the overall keybutton top size. Note that this tiling arrangement may also add some extra height to the keyboard when in a storage position, and for really small micro cellphones, this may be an impractical tradeoff.
The second instance of micro cellphone keyboard design may utilize keybutton tops that change actual size between storage and use positions. Various arrangements of accomplishing keycap size change are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,739,774 to Lahr, which is expressly incorporated herein in its entirety by reference thereto, and those arrangements of keycap expansion may be used herein. Note that if the keybutton physically expands, the presented legend on the keytop may also be caused to expand during the transition between storage size and final use size of the micro cellphone's keycap.
While this discussion has its principal focus on number dialing keyboards for micro cellphones, the same deployable keyboard technology may be used for somewhat larger keyboards, as on Personal Data Assistant devices (PDA's) or on “Smart Phones,” which may have larger alphanumeric data entry keyboards.
Note that while single direction expansion (X-axis only), e.g., essentially in a single plane, may be used to provide more active keyboard area when the keyboard is deployed for use, it may be more favorable to employ both X- and Y-direction planar expansion.
While expanding a “surface mount” keyboard may be practical, for very tiny keyboard designs, it may be favorable to consider “drawer” type deployment for these very small devices. One or more “drawers” may be used to house the keyboard in its storage mode. When the drawers are extended, the keyboard is brought forth, and the keyboard may expand in at least the X- (width) dimension. Alternately, the deployed keyboard may expand in both the X- (width) and Y- (length) dimensions.
Certain aspects of the use of a pull-out drawer associated with wrist-carried communication devices or computer equipment are believed to be described in a number of U.S. patents.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,076 to Thorp is believed to show a small telescoping “drawer like” section telescoping out from a wrist carried radio telephone (an earlier terminology), but the device's keyboard is not carried on the extending drawer sections. Rather, the extending drawer sections provide a physical distance between the microphone on the end of the drawer and the earphone unit mounted on the other side of the radio telephone, and the keyboard is mounted just beneath the display area and does not move or change size.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,163 to Hatcher is believed to describe a single drawer which slides out, as from under an existing computer table. A completely separate keyboard (standard layout) is placed upon this surface. Thus, when not in use, the drawer slides back under the computer table surface, but may be slid out when the computer was in use, so as to save computer desk top space. The action of the sliding parts is discussed therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,934 to Wilson is believed to describe a similar sliding “pull out” drawer, mounted under a computer table surface, but adds structure to the drawer that retracts and raises, as for instance, when the drawer is pulled out. A section of the drawer may remain flat to serve as a base for a mouse pad. The moving segment of the drawer may be used as a portion of the computer housing (or casing), if desired.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,454,369 to Cooper et al. is believed to describe a pullout drawer for mounting under a computer table. Cooper et al. add a front edge palm rest area near the zone where a keyboard will be placed, and facilitates the placement and movement of a cable (e.g., the usual keyboard to computer cable and presumably the mouse to computer cable as well).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,467,860 to Remmers is believed to describe a pullout drawer. But instead of a flat surface for mounting a keyboard (or mouse), the system houses a wire basket. The basket may be used for mounting other things, or, e.g., for storing or filing materials. The action of the sliding parts is discussed, with adaptations particularized for use with a wire basket “tray.”
While it may be common to provide a slide out drawer for utility uses, as just below a computer table surface, micro cellphone pull out drawers hereof may utilize multiple extension drawers, where, for example, for a two drawer configuration, each “drawer” provides one half of desired keyboard keys. The whole keyboard may be presented only when both keyboard drawers are extended, one below the other.
In the case of the micro cellphone, the bottom of the main electronic chassis becomes the “computer table” beneath which telescoping slides are mounted, and the sliding thus takes place beneath the electronic chassis of the micro cellphone, e.g., one drawer beneath the other.
All keybuttons may be incorporated on the individual “drawers.” “Legend space” may be provided adjacent to the keybutton mounting area for additional information labels referring to an individual keybutton.
In addition, in the last four patents discussed above, the drawer trays are provided for the latter placement of objects, such as complete keyboards or computer mice.
And, while some of these drawer device patents may have presented facilitating cable placement for keyboard-to-desktop computer or mouse-to-computer wires, according to an example embodiment of the present invention, wiring may be completely integral to the drawer assembly and may be arranged to never be handled by the user. Herein, flexible polyamide strips with etched copper circuitry may be fixedly mounted between keybutton switch area and a logic board of an associated micro cellphone. The flexible polyamide strips may fold and/or loop and be arranged to allow slide-in or slide-out of the drawers without breaking the circuit connection between the keybutton switches and the micro cellphone logic board.